Kevin Modesti: Front-row view of American politics in New Hampshire

NASHUA, N.H. - For political junkies who fly in from around the country every four years to enjoy classic election theater, the campaign for Tuesday's New Hampshire primary shaped up as a letdown.

New Hampshire's make-or-break influence on the presidential race had shrunk in recent decades. Curiosity about the 2012 candidates had been diluted by months of nationally televised debates. Only the Republicans had a real contest going, so there were fewer contenders and fewer events.

With polls leaving little doubt New England local Mitt Romney would top the vote, rivals already were turning to the next battle. Even the weather was disappointing - meaning it wasn't as freezing as normal for January, and roadside campaign signs weren't buried in snow up to their slogans.

I am in New Hampshire as part of a group of old sports-writing buddies who have come to the Granite State since 1988 on a quest to shake hands with all of the candidates and get a front-row view of American politics. If New Hampshire is the Sears Roebuck of retail politics, we are among its most loyal customers.

One of the group, Phil Rosenthal, said the primary that feels like a real-world equivalent of basketball's Final Four in most election years had the air of a Final Three this time.

Something was missing.

For me, that began to change when Rick Santorum crawled out from under a rock to finish a close second to Romney in last week's Iowa Caucuses - and climbed up on a rock in New Hampshire.

In the kind of seemingly unscripted campaign moment you wish were more common, we saw Santorum literally stand on a knee-high boulder to address dozens of voters stranded outside an overcrowded event Saturday in Hollis, N.H. He even engaged in verbal combat with questioners on abortion, gay issues and the former senator's beloved Penn State.

"I apologize, I really do, for not being able to have everybody get in," Santorum said.

"Thank you for coming out here for us!" a woman shouted back.

"We love you!"

You don't get that kind of personal touch at the California primary, do you?

Santorum's rock-star moment in Hollis confirmed that face-to-face politics is alive and pretty well here.

But it also confirmed some of the fears about this year's first-in-the-nation primary, where Republicans' waning excitement about their choices in a challenger for President Obama matches Democrats' disappointment in Obama.

The Santorum event overflowed with people because it was booked into too small a space (in a red-barn-turned-town-hall). While that's basic campaign stagecraft - a candidate would rather brag that his crowds are just too big than have to explain empty seats - it seemed that this year's too-small spaces are smaller than past years'.

Four years after 1,500 Democrats lined up on a numbingly cold primary eve to fill the Concord High School gymnasium floor for an Obama speech, a few hundred Republicans went to an Exeter High gym chopped in half by a partition to see Romney appear with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Sunday night.

Christie's charmingly pugnacious speech made for another of those moments when you're glad to have made the trip. Still, the fact that the most crowd-pleasing talk of pre-primary weekend was delivered by a noncandidate was another reminder of the campaign's dramatic shortcomings and front-runner Romney's limited charisma quotient.

Romney warmed up the crowd for Christie, not the other way around. That seemed odd until it became clear Romney couldn't possibly follow Christie.

The four days I've spent here, motoring around the Nashua-Manchester-Concord area with Rosenthal for up-close looks at the candidates, have been full of such sobering moments. For us, there's no fear or loathing on this campaign trail, but also few thrills to compare with the Obama-Hillary Clinton battle of '08. What Republicans call the Most Important Election in American History could use the marquee appeal of a Clinton or a Bush. (Barring a running-mate selection, this is the first presidential election since 1976 to involve neither dynasty.)

The low-watt field hasn't discouraged my friends Phil and Bruce Schoenfeld and me from trying to extend our streak of shaking hands with every Democratic and Republican campaigning in New Hampshire. The streak goes back to '88, when Bruce and I did the primary for the first time after he mused that sportswriters should vacation at real-life spectacles the way doctors and plumbers might take holidays at sports events. What's amazing is how easy it is for regular people, without media credentials or campaign affiliations - but with effort and ingenuity and accurate GPS - to get close enough to touch the would-be leaders of the free world.

We couldn't shake the hand of Rick Perry, who focused on the South Carolina primary and held no nondebate events in New Hampshire while we were here. But we got handshakes with all the rest: Romney (a strong, look-you-in-the-eye, John McCain-caliber shake on the rope line at a Saturday-morning rally in Derry), Santorum (next to his rock in Hollis), Newt Gingrich (as he stepped off his campaign bus for a town-hall-style event at a Mexican restaurant in Manchester), Jon Huntsman (as he walked into the debate theater Sunday morning in Concord) and Ron Paul (as he walked out of that debate hall).

And Christie - a head-start on 2016?

It's no longer true that, as New Hampshire goes, so goes the nation; Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama were elected after failing to win the New Hampshire primary. Barring an upset Tuesday night, it's not true that New Hampshire will be pivotal for Romney and his opponents. But it's still true that these small early-primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire are uniquely configured to let voters judge candidates up close.

That is worth being part of, even if the political theater isn't filling big rooms the way it did four years ago - and (our future vacation plans assume this) the way it will four years from now.

Kevin Modesti is an editorial writer for the Daily News. Readers can contact him by e-mail at kevin.modesti@dailynews.com.